NAME

       scim — smart common input method

SYNOPSIS

       scim -l
       scim [-c config] [-e|-ne engine] [-f frontend] [--no-socket] [-d]
       scim -h

DESCRIPTION

       Smart common input method (SCIM) is a platform for input methods.  Input methods are useful for users who
       need  to  input characters that can't be represented by the keys or key combinations on the keyboard, and
       it's essential for languages that use ideograms, such as Chinese, Japanese and  Korean  (CJK),  as  their
       alphabets contain hundreds or thousands of characters.

       This  is  the  main  program of SCIM platform.  It can be used to invoke the input method as well as list
       available input method modules.

OPTIONS

       Most options have both a short version and a long version, and they take the same arguments.

       -c | --config module
              Use specified Config module.

       -d | --daemon
              Run as a daemon.  The program will exit and leave a daemon in the background if invoked with  this
              option.

       -e | --engines module[,module]...
              Use  specified  IMEngine  modules.  Only the named module(s) will be loaded, separate module names
              with comma.

       -ne | --no-engines module[,module]...
              Use all IMEngine modules except specified ones.  All modules  except  the  named  one(s)  will  be
              loaded, separate module names with comma.

       -f | --frontend module
              Use specified FrontEnd module.

       -h | --help
              Show summary of options.

       -l | --list
              Print  the  version  number  and  list  all  the  available modules, categorized in three groups —
              FrontEnd, Config and IMEngine.

       --no-socket
              Do not start a socket FrondEnd module.

ENVIRONMENT

       XMODIFIERS
              Should be set to "@im=SCIM".  Note that XMODIFIERS is case sensitive, and scim need uppercase.  If
              you set it to lowercase, there will be no error message but scim won't work.

       GTK_IM_MODULE
              GTK+ applications can use many different modules to connect with input methods, and SCIM can  work
              in  two  different  modes to provide input methods to GTK+ with two different modules.  One is XIM
              mode, using the "xim" GTK IM module from GTK+ itself.  The other is GTK IM mode, using the  "scim"
              GTK  IM  module provided by SCIM platform.  The environment variable GTK_IM_MODULE is used by GTK+
              to specify which GTK IM  module  the  application  should  use,  to  use  SCIM's  two  modes,  set
              GTK_IM_MODULE to "xim" or "scim" accordingly.

EXAMPLES

       To use scim in XIM mode, execute the following commands in an X terminal (assuming Bourne style shell):
              XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"
              export XMODIFIERS
              GTK_IM_MODULE="xim"
              export GTK_IM_MODULE
              scim -d
              <program>
       Now  you can press Ctrl-space to activate scim in the program you just started from X terminal.  To avoid
       the inconvenience of having to start the program from X  terminal,  make  sure  you  set  XMODIFIERS  and
       GTK_IM_MODULE before starting your X session.

       To  use scim in GTK IM mode, just start any GTK+ application, then right click in the application, choose
       "Input Methods ->  SCIM  Input  Method"  in  the  pop-up  menu,  and  scim  should  automatically  start.
       Alternatively,  you  can  use  the  following  commands  to  set scim as the default GTK IM module (again
       assuming Bourne style shell):
              GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
              export GTK_IM_MODULE
              <gtk-program>
       Here scim will also automatically start when you start your GTK+ program.  However,  it's  still  a  good
       idea  to  start scim explicitly even if you use GTK IM mode, because if only one application is using GTK
       IM mode, scim will automatically stop when you  quit  this  application.   Then  when  you  start  a  new
       application,  scim  will  start  again,  this  can cause quite long delay for application start and quit,
       giving people the impression of "everything slows down when using scim".

       The following command starts scim in daemon mode, using the simple configure  module,  Pinyin  IM  engine
       module, X11 frontend module:
              scim -c simple -e pinyin -f x11 --no-socket -d

FILES

       /etc/scim/global, /etc/scim/config
              Configuration file for system wide settings

       ~/.scim/global, ~/.scim/config
              User specific settings

SEE ALSO

       There  is  a  brief  English  README  giving some introduction and tips about SCIM, in Debian system it's
       installed in /usr/share/doc/scim/ and gzipped.

       Debian users should also read the NEWS.Debian and README.Debian files in /usr/share/doc/scim/.  There are
       also other README files in the same directory about using SCIM on a Debian system.

AUTHOR

       SCIM platform is written by James Su and many other contributors.

       This manual page is written by Osamu Aoki and Ming Hua for the Debian system,  but  hopefully  it's  also
       useful  for  other  users.   This  document  is  distributed  under the same license as the scim software
       package.

scim: 1.4.4                                       January 2006                                           scim(1)